THE WORLD; Mexico's Transition: Faint Praise by and for the Government

AS the term of President Miguel de la Madrid enters its final days, Mexican television has been filled with Government-sponsored commercials extolling the achievements of the past six years. ''Just when it seemed we were about to sink, we Mexicans united our efforts,'' begins a typical promotional message, which then goes on to suggest that even with austerity and budget cuts, the de la Madrid Administration has managed to build schools, roads, subways and hospitals and to avoid any outburst of social discontent.

Such messages, like a Government-distributed bumper sticker proclaiming, ''Mexico: Still on Its Feet,'' may seem a rather backhanded way for a government to pay tribute to itself. But compared with the ''emergency situation'' that Mr. de la Madrid warned of in his inaugural address on Dec. 1, 1982, even the modest gains being laid claim to on his behalf are seen as something worth crowing about as he prepares to turn over power Thursday to President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

''We are not in an emergency situation now,'' Mr. de la Madrid said here last week in an interview at Los Pinos, the Mexican counterpart to the White House. ''We still have economic difficulties. There is no doubt of that. But the phenomena I encountered at the outset of my administration - growing inflation, a shrinking economy, increasing unemployment, an acute shortage of foreign exchange - are no longer present.''

The austerity measures Mr. de la Madrid took to halt the erosion of the Mexican economy have not been popular, and help account for the weak performance in July's presidential election of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has held power here without interruption since 1929. The PRI officially won only 50.7 percent of the vote, its worst showing ever, and newly strengthened opposition parties of the left and right claim even that figure was inflated by vote fraud.

At the individual level, there is no question that Mexicans have had to make sacrifices in their standard of living. By most measurements, health, education and nutrition have all suffered or, at best, stagnated. But Mr. de la Madrid says that he had little choice but to slash Government spending, allow real wages to fall by 40 percent, sell off inefficient state companies and remove consumer subsidies from items ranging from gasoline to tortillas.

''I sincerely believe that if, over these past years, we had not followed an economic policy characterized by reordering and structural change, the recession would have been deeper,'' he said. ''The productive plant, and consequently employment, would have been seriously harmed, and the drop in living standards would have been much greater. This would have been catastrophic.''

Most foreign bankers and economists here agree and praise Mr. de la Madrid for his willingness to absorb the domestic political costs and to take other long-overdue economic adjustments.

''I think de la Madrid has done a good job, given what he had to deal with,'' said a diplomat here who specializes in economic issues. ''He and his people have opened the economy and taken a lot of steps that will have positive results five or 10 years down the line.''

In the political realm, Mr. de la Madrid has been far less resolute or ambitious about pursuing change. When he campaigned for office in 1982, Mr. de la Madrid also promised the Mexican people a ''moral renovation'' in government, which was understood to mean an all-out attack on the corruption that had flourished under his predecessor, Jose Lopez Portillo.

Once Mr. de la Madrid took office, two of Mr. Lopez Portillo's closest associates, the police chief of Mexico City, Arturo Durazo Moreno, and Jorge Diaz Serrano, the director of Pemex, the state oil company, were quickly jailed. Mr. Diaz Serrano was convicted of fraud and after serving a five-year jail term was freed last summer; Mr. Durazo's case is still under appeal. Most Mexicans now view moral renovation largely as a failure.

While acknowledging ''there are still instances of corruption at lower levels of administration,'' Mr. de la Madrid contends that his efforts prevented other abuses.

Measured against predecessors who ordered troops to shoot student protesters and reputedly lined their own pockets, Mr. de la Madrid has himself seemed a model of personal rectitude. As Fidel Velazquez, the Mexican labor leader who is no particular friend of the chief executive, said earlier this month, Mr. de la Madrid ''ends his term of office with his hands clean of money and blood.'' Given what Mexico has endured over the last two decades, that alone may be achievement enough to assure Mr. de la Madrid an honorable place in the history books.

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A version of this article appears in print on November 27, 1988, on Page 4004003 of the National edition with the headline: THE WORLD; Mexico's Transition: Faint Praise by and for the Government. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe